Well, I thought this was worthy of a $5 donation. Now let's just hope they don't spend that much with mailings trying to get me to contribute more.

Right, because the reach of US surveillance stops dead at the border.

When I was a programmer in the 1990's, software companies had this idea that if you hired smart problem-solvers, you could teach them the details, like a particular programming language. These people, ideally, were adaptable and interested in expanding their knowledge. If you accidentally hired someone who couldn't cut it, you let them be on their way. For the employees that you valued, training and tuition reimbursement were the norm. For better or worse, that way of thinking has died. Unless you're a true superstar, you can be replaced by someone who has more current skills, is willing to work for less, and is young enough to not to be encumbered by a family. A programmer is no longer a long term investment, someone whom the company hones over the years, but a disposable razor who seemed sharp at the time of hire. You have someone who won't keep up technically and and has less than ideal social skills? They're outta here, baby, even in the old way of thinking.

The Department of Homeland Security needs to tell everyone to uninstall their Linksys routers until this is fixed, a la Java.

"C'mon fellas, it's all ball bearings these days!"

Depends how your learn. Some people actually enjoy paging through a book, writing notes in the margins, flipping back to a previous page to review a diagram, whatever. A (good) book presumably has a qualified author, editor, and reviewers. They've put time and effort into explaining material clearly. You can check reviews on Amazon or wherever to get an idea if the book would be a good "fit" for you. There are so many websites with so much information, it can be hard to know which ones are best or even mostly correct. If you like researching on the web, that's great, go do it. If you prefer to have an experienced author do the research for you and create a physical book, that's great too.

The competition can be pretty fierce in the website business. Seems like there's a lot of folks out there who'll paint any website for $99.95.

My computer science professors, back in the mid 1980's, were highly suspicious of any computer book thicker than "The C Programming Language." I understand now how they respected Dennis' gift for concision.